Sandra Bullock and George Clooney (Warner Bros.)
Dr. Ryan Stone (Sandra Bullock) is an engineering professional on her first Space Shuttle mission in director Alfonso Cuarón’s tense thriller Gravity. The movie is an impressive technical achievement and a good ride that had me wincing whenever its characters were in danger. But the movie is not the second coming of 2001: A Space Odyssey as some have said, and that’s because the movie also made me wince for reasons that had nothing to do with space travel.
There’s an impressive sequence early in the film that’s the reason some are calling this the future of cinema. Astronauts hover about a space station working on critical repairs, and an easy (or annoying) camaraderie among the trio gives way to tension as debris begins to fly at treacherous speeds into their range. This long sequence is set up as one continuous take, the camera taking us from long shots that establish the vastness of space to intimate closeups through an astronaut’s helmet. Cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki achieves this stunning setup with graceful camera movements that’s a welcome antidote to the rapid-fire editing that is the current standard of blockbuster cinema. This should be a lesson to today’s action movie producers: that long takes, where you never lose sight of the action and know exactly where your characters are in relation to certain doom, are scary.
Gravity is essentially a chamber piece in free-floating space, but its visual accomplishment and well-crafted thrills are brought down to earth by some unfortunate cinematic debris: gender roles, dialogue, and music.
Bullock and George Clooney play familiar versions of their screen personas. This is a problem when Dr. Ryan Stone, a supposed professional, is written with all the gravitas of one of Bullock’s ditzy rom-com characters. Stone’s character struggles outside her space station, and who comes to the rescue? Clooney’s Matt Kowalski, space-strutting, piping country music through his space suit and telling one folksy anecdote after another until he becomes a reliable professional again, just in time to help out the little filly whose name is on the marquee. And I realize it’s the norm for Hollywood to use music to remind audiences what to feel, but Steven Price’s music does this at piercing levels unknown to the romantic comedy.
And the script by Alfonso and Jonás Cuarón does something Stanley Kubrick would never have dreamed of: explain. A series of titles that open the film helpfully spell out the dangerous atmospheric conditions in space, a tutorial that may be useful to those whose previous experience of cinematic orbit is limited to “Duck Dodgers in the 24 1/2 Century.” The screenwriters fill this chamber piece in space with loads of sentimentality, which takes this even further from Kubrickian territory.
But you know what? The sentiment works, though it may have worked better WITHOUT THAT GODDAMNED INSPIRATIONAL MUSIC. At a crucial juncture, a voice barks at Stone, “Please confirm identity,” confirming what this sci-fi movie is at heart: a coming-of-age, finding-your-voice-in-space movie. Gravity is no masterpiece, but it’s a visual spectacle that earns its IMAX 3D badge. And if it made me groan a few times, it still made me care.
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Directed by Alfonso Cuarón
Written by Alfonso and Jonás Cuarón
With Sandra Bullock, George Clooney
Rated PG-13 for intense perilous sequences, some disturbing images and brief strong language
Opens today at the Avalon and a multiplex near you.
